On the topic of remote barrier raising, I was in the tower once at pre-pongo Wattisham having a cup of tea with one of the controllers. Then we were joined by one of her colleagues, who was proudly showing her father around the station...
"If there's an aircraft having trouble, I can raise the runway barrier by operating this switch", she told him, then did so - and the barrier sprang up to attention as advertised.
Followed a few seconds later by some rather choice words on the Storno from the people who'd been working on the barrier at the time...
Fortunately no-one was hurt - just Sue's pride!